sink of blood and crushed veneer
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Caroline-centric. Future fic. She doesn't feel anything other than hatred for that stupid town and its stupid occupants and the stupid brothers who let their love for one girl burn through the lives of others.


**A/n: **I haven't been updating/publishing for a while but my life has been really hectic lately and I hope you guys are not mad at me for that. Also, I'll take the time to pimp out **pariswindspeed's** Stelena fic _**"you fall to pieces like you do"**__._ It's beautiful and tragic and unlike anything you would have ever read. Even if you are an Elena hater, you should check it out. It is just magnificient.

**sink of blood and crushed veneer**

_"There is love in your body but you can't hold it in, _  
_It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin, _  
_Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks, _  
_And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts_ "  
- Florence + The Machine

-O-

She doesn't cry when she buries her mother under six feet of fresh mud that swallows the oak coffin in which she wants to sleep instead.

Doesn't shed a single tear when Tyler Lockwood closes his eyes with her name on his cold lips and a thousand different wishes in his young heart.

Not even when she leaves the town where she has lived and died in the moth hours of the night without bidding a proper goodbye to her friends. Or what's left of them.

-O-

She doesn't cry anymore because she is Caroline fucking Forbes, she was born with golden tragedy running in her veins and a heart turned into stone with the teardrops of the rain.

-O-

Elena endeavours to make her return, leaving message after message on her phone.

Begging. Pleading. Hoping.

She tries compassion : "I know why you left, I don't blame you but I need you here, Caroline. You are the closest thing to family that I am left with... Please come back..."

She bribes her : "I promise we'll do something fun everyday, we'll hit the social scene together and.. and I will even join the cheer leading squad if you - if you just come back..."

And finally she resorts to guilt tripping her : "Your mother wouldn't have wanted this for you and neither do I. Why won't you come back? Am I really that bad? Am I -?

At this point, she chucks her cellphone in the first body of water that she finds.

The Caroline she used to be would have cried along with Elena, would have tried to comfort her even but she is not that girl anymore.

She doesn't feel anything other than hatred for that stupid town and its stupid occupants and the stupid brothers who let their love for one girl burn through the lives of others. She doesn't.

-O-

She carefully avoids thinking about Mystic Falls and maybe she is not doing a very good job considering that she thinks about it all the time but whatever she is not going to dwell on it because denial isn't just a river in Egypt, it is the better half of her life, she has come to terms with the fact and acceptance isn't something she grants easily.

Not anymore.

-O-

On reflecting, she realizes she is not the kind of girl who likes to tell the world about the way she feels but when Damon Salvatore slips into the seat across from her with his trademark smirk stamped across his face, all she wants to do is yell at the top of her lungs about how this is going to fuck her up in six different ways from Sunday.

"Fancy running into you here." He greets in his usual condescending tone, spying the glass of whisky placed in front of her with uncontained interest.

She doesn't talk to him, hoping against hope that he will leave her alone if she ignored him long enough because even after all this time he's still the bastard who used her as a blood bag and sex machine against her will and just because she has forced herself to forget the whole episode, doesn't mean that she has forgiven it.

"I mean, I expected you to be somewhere in America, wasting your time with college but, I am not going to complain, it's a nice change," he says conversationally, making a show of raking his eyes over her figure in a way that makes her want to scream, throw things and maybe, dump the alcohol over his head.

"Though it was cold of you to leave Elena behind, major burn if you ask me, you know what with her family being dea-"

"Shut up," she grits out through her teeth, hands curling into fists. "Just shut up. Please."

Pure amusement lights up his face. "Touchy? Aren't you?"

And all she wants to do is pretend that she isn't as damaged as he makes her out to be but she can't, not with him, because it is his blood that flows through her veins and he knows her better than anyone ever has even if he doesn't want to, even if she doesn't want him to.

But she is low on patience, so she grabs her bag in a swift movement and walks past him ignoring his loud cry of 'see you around'.

Mostly because she knows he means it, eternity is a long time they'll meet again.

-O-

Sometimes, she wakes up in the dead of the night with cold sweat beads on her forehead, a silent scream forming on her lips and her heart racing a thousand miles away.

The kaleidoscope of nightmares won't quit cycling about in an endless loop and it will make her question her sanity more often than not and she doesn't know if it is the lasting trauma of her human days or something more than that because the images of icy blue eyes bleeding into black still manage to inspire fear in her just when she thinks she can't find it in herself to be afraid.

He took her innocence away and Katherine took her life, and she'll be left wondering in the middle of all that, when did her heart die?

-O-

On cold winter nights and sunny summer days, she'll feel like she is living at the brink of the world, just one step away from the edge, bound by the rules of someone else's game that she wasn't meant to indulge in in the first place.

But emotions are things that can be easily repressed in this new life, or un-life, whatever you call it, with the help of a switch that she takes immense pleasure in being able to turn off and it's not because she wants to, it's because she has to.

-O-

Occasionally, she'll remember her mother telling her that the trick is in to keep breathing but now her mother isn't alive and she doesn't even need to breathe.

So where does the trick lie?

-O-

She comes home to her temporary apartment in Paris to find Stefan lounging on the couch, flipping through channels like it was his daily routine.

"What are you doing here?" She asks, tone frigid and eyes narrowed, a deep scowl settling on her face.

He tears his gaze away from the television to regard her with unwanted affection and his eyes run over her much like his brother's had in that seedy, dodgy bar to the north of nowhere. "You changed your name, it was hard to find you."

It's not an explanation but it is the only one she is going to get, she knows that. So, instead of screaming her head off of on him she chooses to be civil. "I have lived a thousand different lives and I have taken a thousand different names."

It is an exaggeration but he nods like he understands nonetheless. "Did you find one that you actually liked?"

And for once her mouth snaps shut and she is out of words.

-O-

Stefan leaves the next day and when he does he kisses her on cheeks and lets her know the answer to the question she wasn't willing to ask because she is still as pathetic, useless, shallow as his brother had once accused her of being. "She turned at twenty-three, still misses you everyday but knows that you wouldn't want to see her. Atleast not now."

And Stefan is right, she doesn't want to because the past still lies too close for comfort and she can't forget it, she can't allow herself to forget it.

-O-

She travels around from place to place, searching for something she doesn't know she wanted but eternity brings things into perspective and she can't keep ignoring all the blood on the floor that she has to scrub off everytime she decides to turn the switch off for her own convinience and someone else's inconvinience.

-O-

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world he walks into hers and the irony isn't completely lost on her.

This is becoming oddly repetitve. Both of them keep finding the other person in unexpected places, drinking sorrows into oblivion. He always says something to piss her off and she always ends up leaving because his words still cut close to the bone and she is still not brave enough to face them.

But tonight feels different, probably because, the loneliness makes her ache and crave for companionship even if it appears with the likes of Damon Salvatore.

He slides into the the bar stool next to her, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

"Youngsters these days," he says to the blonde haired bartender that reminds her of Matt, "So reckless."

The bartender's eyes are frozen and in a hypnotised voice he decides to let him know that she is of drinking age causing Damon to let out a long whistle. "I thought compulsion was below you?"

"Nothing is below me these days." And it is the first time she has replied to him readily, without any sense of hostility.

But if he is suprised he doesn't show it. "Not even me?"

The way he asks the question reminds her of a time when drunk seventeen year old girls were ready to take chances on handsome mysterious strangers they met in dirty, dingy bars and nothing much has really changed except now that the seventeen year old girl is in on the joke instead of the joke being on her.

And she knows better than to tempt a desperate man and she knows better than to spill any words but he is there with his godamned beautiful eyes and there is too much alcohol in her system and all she knows is that she was never good at turning down Damon Salvatore. "Not even you."

His eyes dart to her lips as he leans in to grasp her by chin, forcing her to look him in the eyes, mouth hovering dangerously close to hers. "If you think I am a safe bet then I am betting I am not."

She laughs in his face then, causing him to look at her like she has lost her mind but just as suddenly, the laughter dies, transforming into tears that cascade down her cheeks. And someone has deliberately crossed the wires in her chest because how else can she explain getting messed up so bad in so little time?

He sighs, catches her by wrist, leads her out of the bar to god knows where but she is a little past the point of caring.

-O-

They are barely able to make it to his hotel room but he's there all along, looking at her like she is fragile, breakable even though she is no such thing but he is looking at her like that because he knows she wants him to, because home is a feeling she buried in him long ago unknowingly and if he is the one who can make her laugh, cry, remind her of the girl she used to be then be it.

He kisses her tenderly, kisses her tears, outline of her lips with careful fingertips. He strips her to the bone and whispers wordless apologies that make it hard for her to breathe and there might be lost poetry somewhere in this because he is more tragic than her, but truth is just a rule that they can bend easily nowadays.

Her breathing accelarates when his lips ghost over her navel, press between her legs and then back to her mouth, softly and gently. He skims his fingers over the scar that he had left and then kisses it, making a few more tears escape through the leashes of her lachrymal ducts.

She hates the things that he doesn't say and she hates him more than ever in that moment because the controlling grasp of her mind won't allow her heart to slip and admit that she might love him. "You pushed me, manipulated me, abused me, fed on me."

"I hate you so much," seldom do these words ring true but she wants him to know, needs him to know that she does, she really, really does hate him.

The look he casts her way is heartbreaking, it doesn't fail to remind her that she is young, too young, but then he is kissing her to swallow the rest of her words or maybe the sting that accompanies them, she isn't sure.

"Sometimes, hate is not strong enough to stop love."

The slight inflection in his voice hits her harder than she could have ever expected and it is his way of letting her know that she isn't that great a liar, he might just have known it when she didn't. Just like he knows every name that she has worn and discarded, just like he knows every life that she has lived and died, just like he knows every scar that she has sustained and the untold stories behind them.

"How long have you known I was in love with you?" She asks flippantly, squeezing her eyes impossiby shut to avoid his and in response he holds her tighter, smothering her with soft kisses, fingers brandishing her skin with invisible marks that will cause her more pain than his bite marks ever could have.

"A while and a day."

His answer kills her.

-O-

She leaves at the crack of dawn quietly, careful not to wake up him up, but not before leaving him a crumpled piece of paper returning the infamous words that used to sink under her skin only to make it crawl: 'see you around.'

-O-

Eternity is long, they'll meet again from time to time in another seedy, dodgy bar in the middle of nowhere and she'll lend him her heart again from time to time and maybe, someday when he is feeling less stubborn, he will allow himself to fall.

-O-

**A/n: **Wow, this sucked pretty badly. I don't know even know where this came from or how it ended up like this but I have learned my lesson I shouldn't write character centric fics. I have dropped a whole bunch of quotes from here and there and seem to have lost the track but just because I don't mention the ownership doesn't mean I own them. Anyways, please leave me a review, it will make my day. :) - S.

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